3D-Printed music visualizations of modern albums. Using Processing, each album’s soundwave was analysed and created a unique visual form. The albums are: Jewels by Einstürzende Neubauten, Another World by Antony and the Johnsons, Pink Moon by Nick Drake, Third by Portishead, and the composition “Für Alina” by Arvo Pärt.

An algorithmic exploration of the music we love. Each album_s soundwave proposes a new spatial and unique journey by transforming sound into matter/space: the hidden into something visible.

Researchers at UCLA have been studying the effect of music on human emotions. Specifically, what emotions dissonant (harsh, jarring, inharmonious) music invokes in us. They found that distortion and sharp changes in frequency generally made us feel more excited and carried negative emotions. It’s why rock music makes us so excited and the sound from the shower scene in Psycho is so scary.

“This study helps explain why the distortion of rock ‘n’ roll gets people excited: It brings out the animal in us,” said Bryant.

As an explanation, the group believes that distorted music brings up the long-engraved fear and excitement rush of hearing an animal in distress. Most distress calls involve a sudden, unnatural expulsion of air through the voice box. The result is a distorted version of their normal sounds.

In the making of an ad for the company Voltfestivalen, groups of several species of primates and a friendly two-toed sloth are presented with different synthesizers to see if any monkey can really play them. The result? Watch to see!

Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara, led by composer JoAnn Kuchera-Morin, have created the AlloSphere, one of the largest immersive scientific instruments in the world. AlloSphere visitors experience what it is like to be inside an atom watching electrons spin, to fly through a person’s brain viewing tissue as landscape and hearing blood density levels as music, or to be a nanoparticle on the hunt for a cancerous tumor in a human vasculature system. What you see above:

An immersive surround view of a researcher flying through the vasculature system of the human body, as part of the “Center for Nanomedicine Project.” Credit: Pablo Colapinto, John Delaney, Haru Ji, Qian Liu, Gustavo Rincon, Graham Wakefield, Matthew Wright, JoAnn-Kuchera Morin, Jamey Marth

As part of the Multimodal Representation of Quantum Mechanics: The Hydrogren Atom project, this image shows the hydrogen atom with spin, representing an orbital mixture of two probability waves. Credit: JoAnn-Kuchera Morin, Luca Peliti, Lance Putnam